A letter from Simon

I don’t want to do this to wave a red cloth but much more in hopes of reaching your heart. I want to turn to you because of the highly sensitive subject concerning the community of the Twelve Tribes. Please be honest with yourself and look away from all the circumstances you are in, look away from all the people that have diverse expectations of you. Try to fade out all of this and to look at your heart in order to hear your conscience. Every person has a conscience, you too! Please listen to your conscience.

I want to tell you a little about myself so you can better understand the situation I want to describe. I am an Austrian born in the state of Kärnten in the Year of 1993. Please don’t stop to read because I am an Austrian and you may think that this German matter does not concern me because I am an Austrian citizen.

I grew up in a simple, religious family and maybe belong to the lower part of the middle class. We did not have too much but neither too little to live on.

Till August 2014 I did not know the Twelve Tribes at all and did not know anything about them. I had not heard from them in the Radio, Internet, or TV. Nothing came through to me over other channels up to this point.

My own Childhood

I am someone that longs for justice, as various injustices happened to me during a long period of my childhood. This did not come from my parents but much more from the environment in which I lived. I experienced what it meant to experience injustice as a young child! Did you ever feel the powerlessness to break out of it all and you just could not do it?

One of the consequences of this injustice that I had to experience in my childhood, was that I longed to be independent of the external influences. I hoped that one day I could be self-sufficient on a little farm outside of all the tumult, maybe in a little valley here in Kärnten. Because where I do things myself, I don’t have to depend on other people. Another consequence was that this hard situation in my childhood brought me closer to God.

The consequence was that I sought for communities in the Internet that lived the Christian faith as well as lived in community. The best would be self-sufficient people. At that time I came across the Twelve Tribes on the Internet.

Of course I informed myself about them further on the internet. I read news paper articles, read information on Wikipedia about the Twelve Tribes, read about them in forums and of course also the website of the Twelve Tribes in Germany. I came across very controversial views all around the Twelve Tribes. It became clear to me right away that I had to make my own picture of all of this because I often experienced that the mass media lies.

If I write here that I often experienced that mass media lies many times than I don’t only mean that factual situations are misrepresented but also that things that would have been important were just left out. A very one-sided picture results through that. The media does not perceive their original function anymore to present the truth.

I want to finally come to the point now, even if I would have a lot to say still.

So in August 2014 I visited the community of the Twelve Tribes in Klosterzimmern for the first time. With all my heart I want to describe the situation that I experienced there, unbiased as an eye witness.

They received us as if into their own Family

We were received by loving people right after our arrival on the estate in Klosterzimmern. It was amazing because we were totally foreign to them. Did you ever go to foreign people and were taken in, the way it is only in a very close family circle today? I experienced that there, even though we had never heard of each other, the people did not know anything about me. I could have come with an evil intent, they did not know why I came.1 Nevertheless they received me as one is only received in their own family.2

Do you know what? I soon felt like at home with them. With everything we did there, in all encounters we could sense the love that they had towards other people. This love did not stop, not even after being there for a whole week. They were still the same. Now after a half a year I had the opportunity to visit the people in Klosterzimmern, and do you know what? The love still did not stop. It was the same as on the first day when I met these precious people. How many people do you know, that carry such a continual love in them? A love that applies to guests also and not only to the innermost circle of the own family.

Do you believe that these people are able to abuse their own children? There is no person that honestly loves and then all of the sudden on the other hand abuses his child. If something like this happens, than the love that they showed to other people was only pretended. But believe me, the people don’t dissemble something they are not.

They are authentic. They are real. Also the things that are claimed about them do not correspond at all to the truth.

Truth and Fantasy about the Community

For example in the article on Wikipedia about the Twelve Tribes it says that a strong hierarchy rules there. That is not true. The Bible teaches that the people are the same among one another. There is no higher or lower. Decisions are never made alone, such a thing as a sect boss does not exist. There is no one who rules over certain people and people have to do what others in the community command them to do.

The work is also a subject that many fantasize about. No one there has to work more than he wants to or than he is able to. No one is forced to anything at all. If people there work long and hard than first of all it is not every single day, because there are also days where one works less and that is less strenuous or the Sabbath on which no work is pursued.

For the second part, the people do it voluntary. No one drives them with a whip. Neither is any form of pressure used. The only reason why such slander comes about, is because the world view of the people in the Twelve Tribes does not match with the world view of the German population. The people in the industrialized countries, yes all together people in the whole western world can not understand why someone would give up their life and their material possessions in order to live in the Twelve Tribes.

They don’t understand how someone can work hard and long without receiving a salary.
But is it illegal to do this, just because some have a narrow field of vision and cannot see it? I don’t want to stir up hatred against the German population, really not. It would have probably not been any different if this would have happened in Austria. That is the human being, it has nothing to do with a citizenship. But there is a government, and the fringe groups and minorities which should be protected from the jealousy of others.

Was it not the same with the Jews in the Third Reich? It was the same in Germany and in Austria. Back then things happened because of pure jealousy. It may be politically incorrect to say this, but I will not be silent any more just because it is uncomfortable to say the truth.

I want to also plead with you to not stop reading this before you have finished reading all the way through.

How do You Judge?

Were you in Klosterzimmern already for one day, a few days, a week or even for a longer period of time in order to spend time with the Twelve Tribes? Or do you just judge this hard situation from your office and trust what the experts from different areas or ex-members say? Do you really trust these people? Would it not be good to make your own picture?

I can really only encourage you to listen to your conscience and to make your own picture of the situation and the place! God will bless you if your practice justice. If I write justice than I also mean justice, not the German law. The German law can only be just, if there are people like maybe also you, who apply it in the right way. Is not man above the law? Does man rule the law or does the law rule man?

Up to this point I have not studied yet but it has reached my ears that one of the first statements one hears from his professor when studying law is the following: “Law is not equal with justice.”

That which was done to the fathers and mothers in Klosterzimmern and in Wörnitz may be in accordance with the law in some kind of twisted way, but justice can not be found near and far. In this case one could also speak of legal kidnapping.3 Just imagine you would be in the place of the parents and your children would be taken away. It does not matter now if you have children or not, just put yourself in their situation!

Discipline is neither Violence nor Abuse

Do you know what, I think it is good that children would be protected from their parents or those that have abused them! It is good like that and the state should take action against injustice. Just be careful that you do not mistaken good for evil and evil for good.4 I would dare to put my hand in the fire for the fathers and mothers that I got to know and to say that there was never abuse done to the children.

I mean you should be able to see that yourself. The children were examined by doctors right after the raid and no bruises and just nothing could be found.5 If you still believe that there was abuse than you should take care that the doctor in charge would loose his qualification.

There are no proofs at all of abuse and I think you know that too. One just hangs only on the illegal report of Mr. Kuhnigk.

I already asked if you ever where on the estate of Klosterzimmern. Did you maybe realize that the rooms in this scandalous video don’t even exist? Let them show you the room that was shown in the film. But I can tell you right away that you won’t find this room, because the video is assembled.

This video is less equivalent to the truth than if I would say that the earth is a disk.

That which was shown in the scenes is equal to that of a movie. What for example does heart beating in the background music have to do in a factual report?6 The people that saw the video went into a rage. They were lead into believing something that does not exist.

I mean the fathers and mothers in the community of Klosterzimmern stand with it because they think spanking is good, because the Bible teaches us to spank our children.7 If I write about spanking here than I am not writing about violence. A few light strokes on the bottom do not induce psychological damage in a child. A stroke with the bare hand in the face, for example, is much worse because it injures the soul of the one beaten.

Why was it not shown in the RTL-report how the parents hugged the children and showed them their attention and conveyed that they loved them, after the children had gotten some light strokes?

A wedding was being held in the community of the Twelve Tribes during the time that Mr. Kuhnigk was making his illegal recordings. Did you know that? Why did it not show all the small and big children how they were dancing and just being happy with all their hearts? I know why all these things were kept secret. Because as sad as it is, some people are not interested in speaking the truth.

People like this reporter and the whole media have many spectators, many listeners, or many hearers.

They don’t care about the truth as long as the numbers are right.

Listen to your Conscience

But don’t be like these people. I plead with you! Listen to your conscience and take care in your area where you are with all your possibilities that justice would come forth in all the court cases for the people on the estate in Klosterzimmern and also for the people in Wörnitz. Please see to it that justice would come forth and that all the people that dealt wrongly would receive their penalty.

It is becoming more clear that it is not only about the children but according to statements of the establishment it is that the Twelve Tribes would form a subculture. I want to ask you a question, is it a crime to form a subculture? Does not every foreign minority also present a subculture for themselves?

Examine this new “subculture”, however you want to call the Twelve Tribes. Is it not a blessing for the state to have peaceable people in their state? Did ever a member of the Twelve Tribes invoke terrorism? Did ever a part of the Twelve Tribes cause trouble, stir up part of the population?
What is with the Amish in America, the Mennonites, or the Hutterites? They are accepted and the Twelve Tribes not? Is this just or rather unjust?

If it is about matters as this, then one does not want to hear about tolerance anymore although everyone speaks about it. We should tolerate homosexuals which undermine the family structure and a minority which believes in the Bible and takes it serious enough to live according to it, we should not tolerate? What kind of tolerance is this? Maybe the tolerance of the intolerant?

The Amish had to experience humiliation for a half a century because they spanked their children. Men and women had to pay fines and go to jail. But after this difficult time the United States accepted and explicitly gave them the permission to spank their children. Do the people in Klosterzimmern and in Wörnitz also have to suffer for half a century?

Where is justice?

Another question intrudes. Where you never spanked as a child? If it was really that way then you can know that you are a big exception. Not to long ago it was a common practice that children were spanked. Were they all abused or are they people who are able to be fathers or mothers today—are they able to live in the society?

Have you noticed that the society is going down hill since this ideology of the anti-authoritative education? I went to a higher technical college and learned the construction trade. I had an apprenticeship time of five years and fished my graduation with awards. But already during my time in this school I could recognize how it was going down hill slowly but surely. The children are not able to live in the society, their lives are marked by alcohol, sexual self-indulgence, and parties.

I am a 21-year-old Austrian, I experienced how it is with our youth all very closely. But what will be in 10 or 20 years? These people will have leading positions. How should they make it to lead a state, when all of their youthhood they have learned nothing, they have not learned to be social, they have not learned to submit to authorities?

I promise the situation in Germany is not different. Just look at it, it started when they stopped spanking children because they believed that man is so far developed that such primitive means are no longer necessary. But just look at it yourself how the society is.8

As an eye witness I just want to speak straight to your heart once again. It is clear to me that the things that happened like they did in the Twelve Tribes went forth from powerful people. Don’t let yourself get intimidated by them! There are many people who stand behind you if you practice justice. Don’t allow further injustice to happen against the Twelve Tribes and against other German families. Can you be sure that it would not happen to your children or grandchildren and that they would be taken away one day? Pardon if these sentences to you are not courteous enough. I am not perfect, no one is! But everyone can listen to his conscience and God will bless the one who practices justice.

Not to long ago it was still normal that children got strokes when they did not obey. My grandfather did not only tell me once about the stick that his teacher always had ready. If again someone did some kind of nonsense than it was said, hands on the table and then you got a stroke with the stick on your hands.

Back then a stick without consequences and today a few strokes with a short reed like rod with a criminal proceeding and a punishment that is unheard of. What is happening? I mean does nobody notice or has common sense in most people said good by already.

Mater of factually these so “studied” people come along and just say that correction with a rod is “out” on top of it, it is physical injury. I usually don’t have anything against people that completed their studies but some times it is questionable what thoughts have been implanted into peoples heads.

I mean who would listen to me if I said that the results of a survey showed that it is necessary to show children where their boundaries are. It could be quite necessary to clearly give these boundaries through spanking. The people would smile. Maybe they would say, “What does he want. He did not even study. He should not act up like that.”

But one believes everything the studied people say? Just because they “learned” it? How twisted has our world become already. But I cannot hold it against anybody. If you don’t run around with open eyes and watch out with all the garbage that is stuffed into you through the news papers, radio, TV and Internet, than you are retrained so that you are a spineless person in a state and have to just let everything please you. You don’t have to think either because others do it for you.

Please wake up and don’t believe everything that they serve you. Things that news papers or other media writes is often false and lied. This is a hard judgment, but whoever questions the media will soon realize how the wind blows.

To get to the Point I want to say that the reports do not have anything to do with reality in relation to the Twelve Tribes. Also the articles on Wikipedia show a total twisted picture of this Christian community. I mean already that they are branded as a sect. But what more should I say, one specially does that with the things they are afraid of.

Who was ever really there and just had one reasonable conversation one time with the people of this religious organization? Who read their fliers? Looked at their website? I can only recommend to everyone to make their own picture of the situation, forming their own opinion about the Twelve Tribes and that after having heard both sides. I did that, I looked at the way these people live. I can just say it is so different than represented in the media.

One will laugh or cry (?) about the illegal video recordings of this RTL-reporter. The thought tortures me that people are so blind and cannot see what is really happening. That it is not about justice but that from up in the government it was decided that the Twelve Tribes cannot exist. It is not any more about the children and about the proceedings surrounding them.

In past court hearings and proceedings it was said that for a long time already it is not any more about the children of these parents but only that the Twelve Tribes are forming a subculture. Why else are the parents promised that they would get their children back if they leave the Twelve Tribes?

Do the parents change just because they leave the community? Why should the children be safe from spanking then? The parents are the same before and after.

If you ask me, Christian persecution has erupted in the middle of a civilized world, in a democratic country. Christian persecution has taken place for a long time already, just subliminal, in a way that it is hardly noticeable. Now it is becoming more and more visible.

Let us not allow it to happen. Should what happened to the Jews be repeated?9

Footnotes

Obviously as the RTL reporter did, deceitfully and with wicked intent. ↩